Year 7

[Whyisitsodifficult]

Can you tell me if your Year 7 is moving around the school and having their lessons with a specialist teacher? My DD is not having specialist teaching and staying in her class bubble for all lessons, and her lessons are being differentiated. Is this the norm?

My y7 stays in the room and only moves for cooking, science, piano lessons and PE. Specialist teachers move around to them. In terms of setting, it would be unusual to set in the first term of y7 anyway ime, and teaching the range of abilities of a y7 class isn't very different to teaching a y6 class. I believe they would usually be set after Christmas, although I'm not sure this year.

Our Y7s are not set and all being taught mixed ability this year. We usually set for maths almost straight away so it is a big change for us maths teachers. I am pitching most of my teaching to the middle ability and then when it comes to the students completing questions I differentiate and have three different levels of questions. By now I know my class quite well so changed the seating plan at half term to reflect who might need more support and sat them in a place I could get to them without getting too close, so the end of a row for example. It's no where near as good as when we set them, and I hope we go back to setting asap, but I'm doing my best.

DC's Y7 class stays in their tutor group and specialist teachers come to them, except for Spanish and Latin where they are in mixed bubbles (4 languages to pick 2 from so can't keep them in tutor groups).

Normally they are set for most subjects - this hasn't happened this year due to Covid, however all the children sit banding tests as part of the application process, and the school organised a summer school in July where they sat English and Maths tests as part of the activities.

From what I can work out, they seem to have broadly set the tutor groups by ability based on banding test, summer school tests and primary reports.

It's a huge school (390 intake) so reasonably easy for them to do that.

We have been told that there has been no setting at all at this stage, but having accidentally wandered into the zoom parents talk for the wrong class by mistake, and not realising until the end of the session that mine wasn't till an hour later, all I can say is there was a massive difference in the kind of questions being asked and the expectation levels for students and teachers. Makes me very hmmm about the idea that there has been no setting - especially given how much data they have to hand!

DC's school have never had sets in Year 7, except for maths, so it's not a big change to keep them in tutor groups throughout. I don't have a Year 7, so can't answer for how they are managing in maths now!!

My Year 7 DS is in sets for Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Latin. They move around the school for specialist teaching but stay in their form room for the others.

My year 7 is taught in his form room with teachers moving for most subjects. Maths has been set from very early on, and English since half term, so they switch between year 7 form rooms for that. They move to specialist rooms for art, music and DT subjects, and occasionally use a science lab for practicals.